Eta is moving over Honduras as a weakened tropical depression, but is still bringing the heavy rains that have caused deadly landslides, while drenching the country’s east and the north of Nicaragua.
The storm no longer carried the winds of the category 4 hurricane that battered Nicaragua’s coast on Tuesday, but it was advancing so slowly and dumping so much rain that much of Central America remained on high alert.
Eta late on Wednesday had sustained winds of 55kph and was moving west-northwest at 11kph. It was 185km south-southeast of La Ceiba.
The long-term forecast called for Eta to spin back out into the Caribbean late yesterday and then reform as a tropical storm today — possibly reaching Cuba on Sunday and southern Florida on Monday.
Heavy rain was forecast to continue across Honduras through at least yesterday, as Eta moved northward toward the capital of Tegucigalpa and the northern city of San Pedro Sula.
Before the center of Eta even reached Honduras, hundreds of people had been forced from their homes by flood waters.
Early on Tuesday, a 12-year-old girl died in a mudslide in San Pedro Sula, said Marvin Aparicio of the Honduran Disaster Risk Management Agency.
On Wednesday, Mayor Edy Chacon in the central Honduras town of Sulaco said that a 15-year-old boy had drowned trying to cross a rain-swollen river.
That brought the storm’s death toll to at least four in Nicaragua and Honduras.
Aparicio on Wednesday said that about 379 homes had been destroyed, mostly by floodwaters.
There were 38 communities cut off by washed-out roads and five bridges in the country were wiped out by swollen rivers.
Among those rescued were Karen Patricia Serrano, her husband and five children.
Their home was flooded with waters from the Lancetilla River and they had been in a shelter in the northern city of Tela since Monday.
“We lost everything,” the 32-year-old woman said.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do. My husband is 74 years old and because of his age he can’t work. I even lost my little animals,” she said, referring to chickens, cats and dogs.
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